More than 3 billion prescriptions are written each year in the U.S. alone, effectively preventing or treating illness in hundreds of millions of people. But prescription medications also can cause powerful toxic effects in a patient. These effects are called adverse drug reactions (ADR). Adverse drug reactions can cause serious injury and or even death. Differences in the ways in which individuals utilize and eliminate drugs from their bodies are one of the most important causes of ADRs. Differences in metabolism also cause doses of drugs to be less effective than desired in some individuals.
More than 106,000 Americans die—three times as many as are killed in automobile accidents—and an additional 2.1 million are seriously injured every year due to adverse drug reactions. ADRs are the fourth leading cause of death for Americans. Only heart disease, cancer and stroke cause more deaths each year. Seven percent of all hospital patients are affected by serious or fatal ADRs. More than two-thirds of all ADRs occur outside hospitals. Adverse drug reactions are a severe, common and growing cause of death, disability and resource consumption.
It is estimated that drug-related anomalies account for nearly 10 percent of all hospital admissions. Drug-related morbidity and mortality in the U.S. is estimated to cost from $76.6 to $136 billion annually.
Most prescription drugs are currently prescribed at standard doses in a “one size fits all” method. This “one size fits all” method, however, does not consider important genetic differences that give different individuals dramatically different abilities to metabolize and derive benefit from a particular drug. Genetic differences may be influenced by race or ethnicity, but may also be largely unpredictable without identifying correlating genomics. What is needed are improved methods for predicting an individual's response to a given drug or a particular dosage of a drug.